Bookshare Blog

Published October 10, 2011

Celebrate National Dyslexia Awareness Month and Win Read2Go!

October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month, and Bookshare invites you to help spread the word. Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that results in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. You can learn more about dyslexia by visiting the International Dyslexia Association website. Individuals with severe cases of dyslexia may find it very difficult or virtually impossible to read traditional print books. Bookshare makes printed text accessible to people with print disabilities like dyslexia, visual impairments, and physical disabilities by allowing them to listen to books with highly natural text-to-speech voices, read multi-modally (see and hear words…

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Published September 23, 2011

Does Bookshare Have the Books and Textbooks I Need?

This question comes up frequently and doesn’t have a clear “yes” or “no” answer. Every month Bookshare adds more of the books our Members want! We process hundreds of textbooks based on student requests and add lots of postsecondary titles from university partners. We added over 16,000 new books to our collection from April to June this year, including New York Times bestsellers as well as hundreds of new textbooks. Please consider some facts. Bookshare now has over 125,000 books; teachers and professors regularly assign many of these books as required reading. Over 6000 are classified as textbooks. Publishers have…

Announcing the Winners of “Bookshare Everywhere” Summer Contest!

Congratulations to all our summer contest participants on a job well done! 398 students, from Kindergarten to college, participated in making Bookshare’s third annual summer contest a success. This year’s theme, “Bookshare Everywhere,” celebrated summer reading and encouraged students to take Bookshare books wherever they went. Students participated by reading as many books as they could and sharing where they read books this summer and how they made summer fun! Ready to meet the prize winners? Drum roll please! Grand Prize: This year’s grand prize iPad 2 was awarded to the contestant who came closest to guessing the total number…

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Published September 12, 2011

California Teacher Empowers Learning Independence

Impressions from a School Visit It’s a busy time for Leslie Anido, special education teacher in San Jose, CA. She teaches fifth graders with physical disabilities preparing to transition to middle school. “It is very difficult for students with physical disabilities to access traditional print,” said Ms. Anido, when I was there recently for a training with her class about Bookshare and digital books. At the time of my visit, Ms. Anido invited a former student back to her classroom. She was preparing for college which made Ms. Anido very proud. In the training, we discussed how to search for…

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Published September 8, 2011

Assistive Technology Spotlight – Read2Go

We often get asked, “What works with Bookshare books?” So on occasion, we’ll feature the latest and greatest assistive technologies that our members can use. This week, we are pleased to feature Read2Go, our new accessible e-reader app for the Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. For quite some time, our members have been asking for an app that they could use with Bookshare books on these popular Apple devices. We listened and are excited to say that Read2Go not only makes reading Bookshare books accessible on Apple products, but also super simple. Read2Go allows you to find, download, and…

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Published September 1, 2011

Graduate Student Finds Books in Bookshare

Many thanks to Lauren Conner, graduate student, for sharing her story. Lauren Conner stumbled across Bookshare last year looking for postsecondary accessible books for her studies in Community and College Counseling. She attends Longwood University in Virginia and has impaired vision. “When I look for a textbook on psycho-pathology, ethics or behavior modification, I am thrilled that the digital book is already in Bookshare’s online library collection,” said Lauren. “Another member must have taken the same course and requested all the required books that I need. I love that!” Since birth, Lauren’s visual impairment made it difficult for her to…

Let Reading Come Alive! Download 5!

If you, our teachers in schools with Bookshare accounts, could do one thing to help turn your non-reading students with print disabilities into readers, would you do it? This fall, we’d like you try something. For each student, download 5: 3 for school and 2 for cool. Get them their textbooks – let’s say at least 3 – and then get 2 more that you think your students will enjoy reading for fun. Many students tell us that using Bookshare for their school work has opened up the world of books. They now read on their own and even download…

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Published August 17, 2011

Hidden Gems

Many thanks to Judy S., a Bookshare member and volunteer, for this guest post! If you have a horse-crazy kid, or were one yourself, you’ve undoubtedly discovered the standard horse book fare, ranging from Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion to Dick Francis’ best-selling horse-racing mysteries in Bookshare’s collection. But did you know that Bookshare’s library contains many other hidden gems relating to horses? Here’s ten of my favorite lesser-known horse books, ranging from young-reader chapter books to adult mysteries to non-fiction titles. For the younger set, don’t miss Kristin Earhart’s Big Apple Barn series. It’s a great introduction to the…

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Published August 12, 2011

Making Research Fun With Bookshare – Part Three

Guest post by Deborah Armstrong, Alternate Media Specialist, DeAnza Community College, CA Different Reading Devices…Is it Time for a Change? If you don’t like reading books on your computer, have you tried portable reading devices? I found portable devices tedious so I taught myself how to use the two screen-reader friendly DAISY readers for Bookshare members –Victor Reader Soft and Amis. Both applications let me sort through books on my computer first. After I do that, I move the books to my portable device to read them. Also, consider downloading the free Read:Out Loud Bookshare edition text reader. This way…

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Published August 5, 2011

Making Research Fun With Bookshare – Part Two

A guest post, the second in a three-part series, by Deborah Armstrong, the alternate media specialist at De Anza Community College in Cupertino CA. Now that you can navigate through an accessible book and record notes and relevant information, it is time to search Bookshare and find books on a topic you enjoy or one that makes you curious. Keep your topic broad, but not too broad. If your subject is Animals, you will have too many books in your search results making it hard to select one. If your subject is poodles, you might not find enough. If your…

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